An enterprise, such as a company, educational organization, and government agency, can maintain a relatively large number of data items. Examples of data items include intellectual assets created by personnel of the enterprise. For example, business, product, software or other types of specifications or other design documents can be created for various projects. As another example, test documents can be created that define tests to be applied to projects in the enterprise. Such intellectual assets can be linked together to form a hierarchical object. For example, a first specification may contain other specifications or test documents.
During use, such a hierarchical object may change over time. In some cases, a hierarchical object may be exported from one system to another, which can make identifying changes difficult.